Portugal

The End of the Monarchy

The corrupt King Carlos, who ascended the throne in 1889, made
João Franco the prime minister with dictatorial power in 1906. In
1908, Carlos and his heir were shot dead on the streets of Lisbon. The new
king, Manoel II, was driven from the throne in the revolution of 1910, and
Portugal became a French-style republic. Traditionally friendly to
Britain, Portugal fought in World War I on the Allied side in Africa as
well as on the Western Front. Weak postwar governments and a revolution in
1926 brought Antonio de Oliveira Salazar to power. As minister of finance
(1928–1940) and prime minister (1932–1968), Salazar ruled
Portugal as a virtual dictator. He kept Portugal neutral in World War II
but gave the Allies naval and air bases after 1943. Portugal joined NATO
as a founding member in 1949 but did not gain admission to the United
Nations until 1955.

Portugal's foreign and colonial policies met with increasing difficulty
both at home and abroad beginning in the 1950s. In fact, the bloodiest and
most protracted wars against colonialism in Africa were fought against the
Portuguese. Portugal lost the tiny remnants of its Indian
empire—Goa, Daman, and Diu—to Indian military occupation in
1961, the year an insurrection broke out in Angola. For the next 13 years,
Salazar, who died in 1970, and his successor, Marcello Caetano, fought
independence movements amid growing world criticism. Leftists in the armed
forces, weary of a losing battle, launched a successful revolution on
April 25, 1974. After the 1974 revolution, the new military junta gave up
its territories, beginning with Portuguese Guinea in Sept. 1974, which
became the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. The decolonization of the Cape Verde
Islands and Mozambique was effected in July 1975. Angola achieved
independence later that same year, thus ending a colonial involvement on
that continent that had begun in 1415. Full-scale international civil war,
however, followed Portugal's departure from Angola, and Indonesia forcibly
annexed independent East Timor. Also in 1975, the government nationalized
banking, transportation, heavy industries, and the media. Portugal
continued to experience social, economic, and political upheavals for the
next decade.